Saturday, September 27, 2014

Skull Kingdom

One of Orlando's late great lamented vanished tourist attractions is Skull Kingdom, a castle fronted by an enormous skull on International Drive. It opened in 1993 and closed in 2007, and was your basic walk-through "spook house" where families strolled around in trepidation as strobe lights flashed and stuff exploded and people in costumes jumped out and went ooga-booga. Other entities have tried to pick up Skull Kingdom's fallen torch and carry on the tradition, like Terror In Orlando, 3D Funhouse and Mayhem Manor, but just as science has proven you cannot mold some other random bald guy into a replacement for Curly in the Three Stooges, you cannot recreate the low-budget glory and grandeur that was once Skull Kingdom.

But thanks to the magic of YouTube, 33 minutes of raw footage of Skull Kingdom in its heyday, filmed by a production crew for a TV commercial, can be viewed here.